For the record, D.I.P.S. is “Dumbness Induced by Pregnancy Syndrome.”

When I am pregnant (I am not pregnant right now), I get it bad.  And my family thinks it’s hilarious.  I mentioned it a while back when I talked about going on a walk around the neighborhood and forgetting to put on my pants and other misfortunes.

Well, my sister loves my D.I.P.S. stories and brings them up often and laughs belly laughs.  And now (evil laughter), SHE is pregnant.  And it’s my turn to laugh at her when she does things like drive 45 minutes to return an item, and forgets the receipt . . . and the item.  So, in her honor, I am republishing my most humiliating D.I.P.S. story (and her favorite) of all time, and hoping that karma hits her hard.

Sigh.  When I was pregnant with my first, I suffered greatly from what my husband and I called D.I.P.S. (Dumbness induced by pregnancy syndrome), and believe it or not, we have actually seen it mentioned in magazines since then.  It’s basically this side-effect of pregnancy where your brain turns into oatmeal and you do idiotic things you never even considered yourself capable of.  Kind of like the time I started to go walking in the neighborhood and realized I didn’t have any pants on.  Anyway…

Set scene:  I was in the middle stages of pregnancy, where you know you look pregnant, but anyone who doesn’t know you well just thinks you look fat.

I drove from North Carolina to my parent’s home in Atlanta to spend a few days visiting.  (I can’t remember if Matt was away on business or if I was just feeling independent and needed a vacation.)  After a day of shopping and some errands, I dropped off my mom to work at the temple and told her I would pick her up when her shift was done.  Come to think of it, my dad must have been out of town too, because I was the only one at home the rest of the evening.  Well, the time came to go get her and I grabbed what I thought were the keys off the kitchen table, walked to the garage, and shut the door.  I could see that my mom’s car keys were sitting on the kitchen table through the window and realized at the same time that the door had locked behind me.  “Oh no.  What do I do?”  I looked around in their garage for a while for a spare key of some kind, and finally decided I would have to go to their neighbors’ house to use the phone.  Actually I had a cell phone, but I needed to look up the phone number for the temple and try to get a hold of my mom.

I had never met their neighbors before, but climbed up the hill that divides their driveways, their two lap-rat dogs yipping at me the whole time.  I knocked on their door that was an entry through their garage because I just felt too lazy to walk all the way around to the front of their house.  They were nice and when I explained the situation they patiently let me in.  They even offered to let me drive one of their cars:  A Hummer or a BMW.  Ha, I have never driven anything bigger or more expensive than a Dodge Neon.  I just wanted to call my mom and find out if there was a spare key to her car or the house.

So I stood in the neighbors’ kitchen while I called the temple.  I was on hold several different times while they tried to track down my mom and let her finish up some of her duties.  The neighbors smiled at me and tried to look sympathetic.  I explained my dilemma to a few nice elderly people on the phone and finally talked to my mom.  She had the spare set of keys with her since she had left her original set with me.  Curses. I told the neighbors that I guessed I would drive their BMW since I was too nervous to drive a honkin’ SUV and went back to my mom’s house to get my purse and stuff off the hood of her car.  As I trudged back down the hill it *dawned* on me that it was absolutely unnecessary for me to hang out in their kitchen for 30 minutes like that since I was ON MY CELL PHONE.  I only needed the stupid phone book to look up the number and I could have taken the rest of my conversation back outside.  As I was reflecting about what a dork I probably seemed like, I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys I must have originally grabbed:  HELLO, THE KEYS TO MY VERY OWN CAR!  The one I had driven to Atlanta and that had been sitting in the garage right next to my mom’s car this WHOLE time.  Enter overwhelming shame.  I turned around and climbed back up the hill and stammered my way through my little “oh, ha ha ha, I actually have keys to my own car and I won’t need to drive your luxury vehicle after all, but thanks anyway” speech to the now totally perplexed neighbors standing outside with car keys in hand.

Then as I turned back to go down the hill, I tripped a little and with my new pregnancy center-of-balance shift, I totally tumbled down the whole hill.  The neighbors ran over to see if I was okay, and I scooped myself up as quickly as possible, said something retarded like “Ha ha, (nervous embarrassed laughter) Oops.  I just slipped a little. Ha ha . I’m fine. I’m fine,”  and hurried to my car as quickly as I could.  I got inside, took a deep breath, tried to process the fool I had been and backed out . . . right into the side of my parent’s garage!  I heard the noise and looked out my door to realize that my driver’s side mirror had hit the door frame.  Well, the neighbors were still standing on the hill watching me, so I just thought “screw it” and kept backing up until the mirror popped backwards and the glass broke out.  I went down the rest of the driveway making sure that I did NOT make eye contact with the people who were most definitely thinking “I’m SO glad I did not let her drive the Beamer.”  I spent the first 20 minutes on the road in a complete stupor…. I could NOT believe that I had become mentally handicapped.  I just went over and over it in my head trying to figure out how I could have possibly committed 32 acts of complete brainlessness in a 40 minute period.  Meanwhile, my mirror dangled off the side of the car by a stretched cable.  It still boggles the mind.  On the way home, I purged all the horrible details to my mother and asked her to please please tell her neighbors I am not normally like that and explain to them that I was PREGNANT.

So let this be a comfort to all of you who have lost your brain function during pregnancy, and a warning to any of  you who are thinking about conceiving a child someday.  (Ha, ha Becca!  Your turn!)  Luckily D.I.P.S. is a temporary condition . . . . I’m told it goes away when  your children graduate from college.

Bring it on ladies, I bet you’ve got some good D.I.P.S. stories.  And after my story, you can’t feel that stupid about it anymore.